|   Question are MP3's supposed to sound like ass? | Worf101
Mar 3, 2003 12:07 PM | | I've avoided downloading or sharing music files for professional and personal reasons. I'm a musician and I've an ethical aversion to getting music and not paying for it. I'm no fan of Record Company exec's believe me but artists should be compensated. That being said my Bass Student (read apprentice cause I'm teaching him for free) put Kazaa on my puter so he could download songs he wants me to teach him. So far I've used it only for that.
However I must admit that the idea of downloading songs and burning my on compilations appeals to me. Problems with this are two-fold to me. First, compensating the artist (if still alive) second, MP3's often sound like chite in my opinion. I took a couple of tunes downloaded as MP3's converted to Wav. files and played them against Wav. files downloaded off my CD's I own. No friggin comparison. I know that MP3's are a compression file but good lord, they should sound better than that.
As to the first problem. I blame the record company execs for the majority of this problem. If they would get together, come up with some service or services wherein I could download any song my heart desires to my hard-drive FOREVER, with high quality sound for a monthly fee and say 20 cents a song (for anything over 5 years old) I'd go for it. As of now they want a subscription fee and 2 dollars a download. Are they friggin nuts. No way every pay site is foundering.
Any suggestions as to how to get better fidelity out of MP3's would be appreciated. I'm a novice at this so I may be doing something wrong.
Da Worfster |
| Pretty much | Mr MidFi
Mar 3, 2003 12:20 PM | | Hey Worf...a lot depends on the sampling rates they were coverted at. That roughly translates to file size; the more bytes, the more sound resolution, the less bs you have to put up with. Some MP3s I've heard don't sound all <i>that</i> bad. But they are never going to sound as good as 16-bit redbook CD wave files because of the lossy compression.
I've never used Kazaa, but I remember Napster had an interface that told you the file sizes available for each song. If you have a choice, more is better. Sorry to sound too obvious here...but FWIW, I agree w/ you about about artistic theft. We do swap comps here, but that's always about increasing music exposure among a group of enthusiasts, which is good for everyone involved (especially the artists). |
| Are they <I>supposed</I> to? No... | DustyChalk
Mar 3, 2003 1:02 PM | | Do they? Yes.
If you're making your own MP3's, use higher bitrate compression -- at least 192. |
| I can name that fart in three notes... | J
Mar 3, 2003 3:09 PM | | I stopped downloading months ago after someone mentioned, on this board, that the program I used (Limewire) was infected with spyware. I'm not such a thief that I have a compulsive need to steal from artists. At least not as much as the record companies that don't compensate them properly for their work, and often don't even live up to the terms of the ridiculously one-way contracts 95% of recording artists are 'forced' to sign (yeah, I know nobody's holding a gun to their heads). But I noticed something while listening to some of the MP3s I have downloaded...some of them sound pretty damn good, and some sound like...ass. Way overmodulated, like the recording level was set way too high. With the end result sounding like the volume's just obscenely high. I suppose that might have something to with the bitrate, but my ignorance shows here, as I don't know what to put that off to. But a lot of the MP3s I have sound great, and I've gotten comps from people who've used MP3s, and they sound just fine too. So what the answer is, I don't know. They're great, though, the ones that sound good. Now, I have read that the industry has been placing 'spoof' files on Kazaa & other places so that people will think they're downloading a song that they want, only to find that they've wasted time on an empty file. I suppose they could be uploading files that are also of poor sound quality, just to screw downloaders up. But then again, that makes no sense, because it would seem that their main target should be uploaders, not downloaders. Prosecuting downloaders won't stop uploaders from putting music out there, but prosecuting uploaders would theoretically remove the supply that the downloaders have available to them.
If you want or need a quickie rationalization for downloading, aside from recognizing that the record companies rip off their artists in a rather brazen fashion, then bitch & moan about downloading (which has mostly impacted the singles market; the albums market has been at least as affected, if not more, by the economy the past couple of years), look at it this way: You're downloading songs to teach yr student. If you download 10 that you're not familiar with, maybe you'll like 3 or 4 of them, maybe even 5. Of those, maybe you like 1 enough, just enough, to want to hear more by the artist. So maybe, just maybe, you go & spend money on one of their records. Or maybe, just maybe, you go see the artist with yr student if they're active & tour in yr area. (More money to the artist this way, rather than filtering it through the recording industry) Look, maybe that's wishful thinking. But the fact is that there are 10 songs by X number of artists that you're now hearing that you otherwise might not have. You're (I assume) not a 19-year-old college kid who's hoarding MP3s on yr computer, so you're not the typical downloader/'thief.' But you just might become a fan of an artist via downloading. Worst-case scenario, the artist never sees a trickle-down effect. But if they don't, you weren't going to spend any money on their work anyway. This way, maybe you will. Or maybe you'll send a comp to a friend or a trader on this board & they'll become a fan & then spend money. But if they don't, then all of this 'thievery' is only that if you assume that downloads are keeping people from spending money that they'd otherwise be spending on CDs. That's a flawed argument. There's no doubt that teen pop & rock acts are losing sales to downloading. But I question how much--and if the kids are spending their money on concerts or T-shirts instead of CDs, because they already have the MP3s, then the artists are most likely making more money then they would be from CD sales. No, I have no facts or hard numbers to back this up, just anecdotes. But the numbers are out there & if anyone wants to call me on this I can try to track 'em down. |
| You lost me... | DustyChalk
Mar 3, 2003 4:52 PM | | ...when you said, "...if the kids are spending their money on concerts or T-shirts instead of CDs..." (emphasis mine) -- that's ridiculous. You, of all people, should know that a large part of the success of an artist is based on CD sales. I understand your holy war on "The Man" (record companies), but I disagree that not buying CD's is the answer. Sure, it hurts the record companies, but it also hurts the artists. |
| Yeah...uh, no. | J
Mar 3, 2003 5:22 PM | | With the massive marketing campaigns that record companies budget for teen pop idols, they're going to sell X number of copies of albums by the artists they indiepromo their way onto the airwaves--in most cases, anyway. That's where I believe a majority of downloading is going on. Britney Spears has enjoyed a prominence over the past 3 or 4 years that's simply staggering, especially if the industry is losing so much in the way of sales to downloaders; and she's just the most prominent of at least a dozen or two artists I could name. If she's not making more money on her merchandising than she is on her record sales, then I'd say there's a good chance she needs new management. Yes, obviously, a large part of the success of an artist is based on CD sales, but there's a difference between how successful they are & how much money they make relative to their success. Remember that spiel by Janis Ian a few weeks ago? She, like the teen pop idols, will see more money through T-shirt sales, concert receipts, and other merchandising, than they will through royalties, in most cases. I'm not suggesting that it's a good thing that the downloaders are not buying CDs, only that there's a small solace in the fact that money is filtering more directly to the artists through merchandising, and, more importantly, that the bitching of the industry about file-sharing is not in line with the damage actually being done to the artists. |
| re: Question are MP3's supposed to sound like ass? | jack70
Mar 4, 2003 9:14 AM | | Worfster,
<i> I've avoided downloading or sharing music files for professional and personal reasons. I'm a musician and I've an ethical aversion to getting music and not paying for it.</i>
I think most of us here share that view (not sure about most teenagers though), but most musicians can't support themselves solely with their music. The major record co's basically make you an indentured servant; the private releases want you (desperately) to sample their wares... so they put them online as streaming or MP3 files. They are put there SPECIFICALLY by the artist as a way to entice you... it's the only way they have to get noticed/make money.
Kazza and other file-sharing programs are another thing. Some actually let people sample, as above, but most DO leave the artist in the lurch. I've never used them because of many reasons, beyond the ethical ones, but mostly technical ones (hacking, and material you have no idea about the quality).
As to the quality of MP3's, I disagree. The technical reality of the compression encoding... a 10 to 1 reduction in size (or more) is nothing short of amazing. Downloading a 40M wav file over a dial up modem is just not practical in the real world. As to quality, at 256 bits [and above] you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. I'm a BIG proponent of hi-fi QUALITY, but too many use this excuse... and it's a straw dog IMO. AM & FM radio, 45's, cassettes, LP's, & most pre mid-90's CD's all have specific audio defects, let alone most people's stereo systems (which are often really awful). But the music is more important IMO. A great old 78 is often more magical than a 96bit digital recording, because of the "music".
There are many MP3 codecs to use, and many software programs to use them in. The bit rate is the biggest thing, but I've heard really low stuff (24), without it bothering me. Most stuff people put on the web is 96 or 128 bits, and yes, it sounds compromised with certain transient waveforms and in certain quiet sections, but it serves it purpose amazingly well. If you set the bit rate high enough, you 'd be hard pressed to tell the difference for 98% of source material. You also have to understand that most MP3 files on the web are recorded and mixed in bedrooms and garages... the source material is not from thousand dollar condensor microphones and technology. Even so, I've heard stuff that's better produced than commercial bands on occasion. It is what it is... another audio tool, with it's own limitations and benefits.
J rightly summed up the "problem" with the corporate side of this. It's been discussed a lot here. The big corporations are unwilling to change with the times, and they'll go the way of the horse & buggy, those that don't evolve and change... even though they'll try their hardest to get government's nose into it on false complaints. CD prices are artificially high... if we had a true free market CD's would sell for $4-6 and CD sales would double... & very few would spend time downloading. They only have themselves to blame. It's a classic economic story -- most people don't know that economics is simply supply and demand, and what happens when certain variables are skewed. |
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